<p>Marite:
</p>
<p>100% agree on 300 academic superstars, 300 sports superstars, 300 performing art super stars, 600 developmental admits
Your left with 300 open slots which makes it a crap shot everyone talking about.</p>
<p>I think the difference in responses is between what it takes to virtually guarantee admission (Intel, Olympics, etc responses) and what it takes to have a reasonable shot (high scores, intellectual strengths and/or strong ECs responses). So as usual, some truth to both sets of responses. Though must say that HYP admissions generally have something extra beyod strong scores/GPA and often have state or regional level achievements (although far from always, just something that makes the kid stand out).</p>
<p>Come on! You must be joking600 development admits? Are there that many billionaires with kids who are qualified enough (not superstars, merely able to do the work) and willing to apply to Harvard Leave a few for Duke, will ya?? 300 sports stars? Even with a large number of teams, Harvard does not need to admit 300 sports stars! and how many music prodigies does it need, even given the large number of choirs, orchestras, bands? </p>
<p>I tell you. I know and have known over the last 30 years or so quite a few Harvard students. And only a very few fit into any of the superstar categories you list.</p>
<p>Agree with marite and relaxmon. I think the differences in opinion might be because we have a difference in opinion on what “Ivy Caliber” means.</p>
<p>Some posters seem to be interpreting Ivy Caliber as meaning people who will get into the Ivys. There are people who just operate at a higher level, as an earlier poster pointed out. And I apologize for my earlier remark that these kids don’t have any fun. They do, I said that without thinking, I have known some of them. I think it is a small group of kids, probably found in the 60 cross-admits that cellardweller mentioned earlier. They are admitted to more than one Ivy, but there aren’t very many of them.</p>
<p>I interpreted Ivy Caliber to mean applicants who could be admitted to the Ivys. There are a lot more of these and I’ve seen some good definitions of them on this thread.</p>
<p>"300 sports superstars, 300 performing art super stars, 600 developmental admits
Your left with 300 open slots "</p>
<p>yeah right…</p>
<p>And where, pray tell, is the source for those figures? or have you “extrapolated” those #"s based on something no one else is privy to? In all my years on CC, I have NEVER read or heard of those level of numbers comprising the makeup of Harvard’s class.
What have you been smoking?..</p>
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<p>I can’t even begin to comment on how ridiculously wrong this is.</p>
<p>Don’t forget the category overlap. Lots of legacy kids and some of the athletes (performers, artists, etc) are also academic stars.</p>
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<p>I’m not trying to be funny, this is through both personal experience and observation from the current and the past school years.</p>
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<p>The 600 includes all cases where the admissions standards are compromised. Which might be because of many reasons
- Legacy a big chunk
- Under-represented-minorities another large chunk
- Any case where the admission standards were bent to let the applicant in</p>
<p>You can check any year admittance to Harvard to verify the figures.</p>
<p>Legacies are generally extremely qualified. Athletes are by far biggest category of lowered standards.</p>
<p>POIH,</p>
<p>URM’s are mostly not development admits. If you’re including URM’s in the special admissions category, and assuming that overall category = 600 students, that’s a different thing. Special admissions = development admits + URM’s + recruited athletes + celebrities + sometimes legacies (depending).</p>
<p>In some cases there is overlap between URM’s and athletic recruits, but of course it’s not completely congruent.</p>
<p>Development admits might even occasionally overlap with athletic recruits, but that is by no means routine.</p>
<p>Development admits are “sure-bet” big money, based on an expectation of continuing past contributions or inaugurating new.</p>
<p>With all this overlap, the total number of hooked applicants goes down significantly.</p>
<p>For instance, from my S’s school: Af-Am double legacies at both Harvard and Yale and academic stars (also one benefiting from being from the town–which is a boost).
Track star, academic star, legacy.
Another was legacy, excellent musician (but had not played at Carnegie Hall) and was salutatorian.
By academic star, I do not mean, by the way, that any of them cured cancer or won an Intel competition. I mean, for example, that the two Af-Am legacies excelled in high school, took several college courses and graduated early.</p>
<p>So there’s plenty of room for the BWRK. Of which I know plenty.</p>
<p>The point of the posting number was that there are only 300 or so academic star and most of the performing art stars and some of the sports, legacy, and under-represented-minorities are also academically solid applicants with respect to the general admit applicant.
Leaving around 800 special category including sports, legacy, under-represented minorities that have compromised academics with respect to general admit applicant.</p>
<p>This phenomenon is most noticeable in Harvard admission and that is why its admission end up as a crap shot for a general admit applicant.</p>
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<p>This is the definition of Ivy Caliber that I used. Just a thought as well-we live in an wealthy area where there are indeed Intel and Siemens Finalists and Semi-Finalist as well as admissions to Julliard etc. The children in this demographic aren’t the BWRK. They are the ones who have had all the benefits money can buy, all the lessons, support, nuturting, and opportunities. So given that the Ivies still have the bills to pay, I suspect the schools like these full pay students but the bar for this subset of applicants is more competitive by the very fact that these children are starting with a leg up. </p>
<p>The flip side is also true. Those without even the basic benefits and overcome huge personal obsticles and still post high result academically and in their EC’s don’t need to be as “perfect” in the scores or level of achievment because they are starting from a different baseline. </p>
<p>Also the post referring to our local high school as being “abnormal” because it sends 30 students each year to Ivies is a little demeaning. These children do have to be even better than the BWRK but that certainly doesn’t diminish from their accomplishments.</p>
<p>POIH:</p>
<p>Your stats are all culled out of thin air. The only solid number is the one that Fitzsimmons gave out: 300 academic superstars. But even they could easily overlap with others categories such as legacies or artists or URMs (I know some who could check all three categories).</p>
<p>^^^marite: I might not be a college counselor or an admission officer at a college but being a parent I’ve gone thru 10 years of college admissions specially HMSPY. I can say with great confidence that there are equal number of academic and performing arts stars at Harvard in any given year and which is ~300 for each of these categories. The number of sports people admitted is > 200 in any year.
The number of under-represented-minorities is posted by Harvard anyway and the legacy number for harvard is very large to begin with.</p>
<p>I don’t think you can dispute the numbers. Yes there is an overlap between different categories but still at the end the number of applicant that goes without any hook is very small ~400 or so and that is why it is a crap shot.</p>
<p>POIH:</p>
<p>I’ve been around Harvard and Harvard students for 40 years–ever since I came to college (subtract six years when I lived away from Cambridge, MA). </p>
<p>Your 400 crapshoot is taken out of thin air.</p>
<p>POIH,
YOU did not go to Harvard, your KIDS aren’t at Harvard and I don’t see any Harvard alumni chiming in to back you up. Get off your high horse-
“I can say with great confidence that there are equal number of academic and performing arts stars at Harvard in any given year and which is ~300 for each of these categories.”-</p>
<p>unless you can provide PROOF for your numbers- [which you cant’]
You are coming across, yet again, as an arrogant know-it-all-who thinks they know it all, when they don’t.
sheeesh…</p>
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<p>How have you gone through 10 years of college admissions? You have one child, and you aren’t otherwise affiliated / in the college admissions field (very few of us on this board are).
Plus, you’re coming from the perspective of a very elite prep school. The achievements and the qualifications from that school – and the schools where those kids wind up – just aren’t anything like the environments that 99% of the kids in the country come from. Many, many perfectly fine candidates for the Ivies come from schools where there are a limited number of AP’s, in which the college counselors don’t know them from a hole in the wall, in which Siemens, Intel and similar types of opportunities are never mentioned, and in which “going to the Ivies” is simply not on the radar screen.</p>
<p>menloparkmom:</p>
<p>Maybe you can’t understand about any process without being part of it but assuming that every one else is like that is wrong.</p>
<p>I don’t have to be an admission officer at Harvard or a parent of a Harvard student in order to know about the process.
Also I don’t have to have 10 children to follow 10 years of college admission process. I prefer to acquire knowledge about the process before I’ve to go thru it.</p>
<p>There is nothing arrogant about knowing things. I’m not asking you to believe what I say . But the information might be useful to those who want to make use of it. Who like you don’t want to use can ignore it. You don’t need to get personal on it.</p>